


hoc, iucunde, tibi poema feci

by glitterburn (orphan_account)



Category: The Borgias (2011)
Genre: Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 20:25:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/glitterburn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Does the poet express himself, or does he fashion himself to fit the poetry?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	hoc, iucunde, tibi poema feci

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sidewinder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidewinder/gifts).



“Your thoughts, Micheletto. They seem to have gone astray. Where are they leading you?”

“My lord.” Stirred from a memory of Pascal, Micheletto is slow to respond. He likes it not, this slow creeping-in of affection for the boy from Milan. It is good for a man to have a master, for then he knows his place in the world. But lovers are more complicated, for they take a man and reshape him in subtle ways; sometimes in ways that cannot be discerned until much later, and then it is hard to change one’s shape back to the way it was before.

Usually he is alert and waiting, a hound that shadows his master’s footsteps, caring only for his master’s intentions and not for any designs of his own. But this boy has made him think ahead. Only to the immediate future, to thoughts of a yielding embrace and cries drowned with the bittersweetness of pleasure; to imagining the shape of Pascal’s throat beneath his hand, the knowledge of life coursing through veins and counted out with each gasp.

Micheletto does not believe in the future. Cesare Borgia and his holy father, his beloved sister—they are the creators of the future. Micheletto is merely an agent of change. He knows this full well, so it rubs at him, the idea of Pascal; it rubs like a burr under the saddle, because he likes knowing Pascal is waiting for him, he likes the thought of a body to hide in and laughter and sweet words and hard caresses.

“You are wandering again.” Cesare glances over, curiosity behind his smile.

“I am often silent, my lord.”

“Indeed, but this silence is different. You seem pensive. I have not seen such an expression on your face before, and now I find myself wondering at it.”

Micheletto considers his response. It’s rare that he shares anything of himself with anyone. He’s permitted only a handful of men to come close, but he’d placed restrictions on them all. Cesare is different; for Cesare he would offer anything, but this is because his master has no need to know him. His master seeks the service, not the man. Cesare’s demands are on his skills, not his slumbering emotions.

He had invited Cesare closer once. That first visit to Forli, when he’d introduced his master to his mother. It had been a necessary visit to buttress the illusion his mother laboured under, but it had meant more than that. He’d wanted Cesare to see him as a man, even as he shrank from the notion.

He cannot be both man and servant, at least not to the same master.

It is a confusing idea, one that puts him in mind of the poem Pascal read aloud: _I hate and I love. Why, you may ask? I don’t know. But it happens, and I burn_.

Safest, then, to speak of what is most recently in his thoughts. Micheletto says: “I was thinking about poetry.”

Astonishment sparks through Cesare’s expression, and then he laughs. “Poetry!”

“Yes.” Micheletto thinks he understands his master’s amusement. They are on the open road, sweat ripening their bodies and dust griming their faces. Poetry should have no place here, and yet... “Would you tell me of its purpose, my lord?”

“Its purpose rather depends on the poet.” The humour fades from Cesare’s voice. “But you do not need me to tell you this. Only consider the doggerel you hear on the streets about my family.”

Micheletto snorts. “That is not poetry.”

“Some would have it so.”

“Then they are wrong.”

“You speak with certainty.” Cesare tilts his head, curious again.

“I am not certain of anything where poetry is concerned,” Micheletto says. “It seems to me to describe things I don’t understand. Or at least it takes things I don’t understand and puts them together in a way that makes sense, and yet still I wonder.” Rolling his shoulders to ease the tension from spending so long on horseback, he scans the landscape for any sign of threat. “The street rhymes about the Holy Father tell me nothing I did not already know. The poetry I speak of tells me what I did not realise, yet it still leaves me in ignorance.”

“It can be a powerful thing.”

Micheletto looks at his master. “Poetry or ignorance?”

“Both.” Cesare nudges his horse closer. Their mounts keep pace, the steady clop of hooves loud on the baked earth of the road. “With poetry, as with much in life, one should always ask two things: Does the poet express himself, or does he fashion himself to fit the poetry? For you see, my friend, the poet is trapped by the circumstances under which he writes.”

“Then he should find another subject to write about, if it pains him.”

Cesare smiles. “Ah, but it is not simply the subject that constrains the poet. It is also the metre. The... method, shall we say, that one chooses to deploy.”

Sunlight warms the back of Micheletto’s neck. He considers. “I see.”

The look Cesare gives him is just as warm. “Yes. I thought you would.” A pause, and then his master asks, “The poem that holds your thoughts. What is it?”

“It is Latin,” Micheletto says, recalling once more Pascal’s lessons and the way he’d recited the poem. “It speaks of love and hate. How it is possible to feel both at once, and to be devoured by it.”

“Catullus.” Shifting in the saddle, Cesare sits taller, his back very straight. “I know his work well. He lived more than five centuries ago and yet we still have the reminders of his rage and despair when the woman he loved betrayed him.”

“Did she?” Micheletto frowns slightly. Pascal had not mentioned this.

“Yes.” Cesare stares at the horizon as if looking at Rome. “She was a faithless woman, by all accounts, but still he loved her.”

Micheletto also fixes his gaze on the road ahead. “Unfortunate man.”

Cesare exhales a long, soft breath that’s not quite a sigh. “Indeed. Love in poetry is much safer than the real thing.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Catullus 50.


End file.
